When prices continue to move in one direction consecutively, it could be telling
you something. If you see a stock trading
at a specific price, it doesn’t tell you much.

But if you know where that price is relative
to its high or low, there may be something
there. How far do you look back? If you’re a
short-term trader, you may want to look at
an intraday time frame—one, five, or fifteen
minutes. Or if you’re a longer-term trader,
maybe you prefer to look back as far as a
month or by option expirations. You can do
that by adding the High/Low Graph column on the Watchlist on the left sidebar on
your thinkorswim platform.

HERE’S HOW (FIGURE 2).

1 – Right-click on a column header on a Watchlist and
select Customize.

2– Scroll down through the Available Items list and
select High/Low Graph.

3– Add it to the current set.

4– Scroll the horizontal slider bar to the extreme right
of the Current Set window, select the dropdown menu,
and choose the aggregation period you prefer and the
inputs for that period.

ANALYZE FUTURES CALENDAR SPREADS

If you’ve stepped into the world of futures trading or are even just
thinking about it, there are some tools and features tucked away
that could open up many possibilities. Ever thought of scoping out
a futures calendar spread? They’re a little different from trading
options calendar spreads. When you analyze a futures calendar
spread, you’re looking at two contracts of the same product but with
different expirations. So, you’re really speculating on the relationship between the nearby and distant contracts, and not on whether
the price of the underlying is increasing or decreasing.

4– Choose any contract you’re
interested in to see all the
listed spreads for your selected symbol.

You can take this one step further and look at the chart of the
spread. This helps to see if the spread between the nearby and distant contract is widening or narrowing. The relationship between
the two contracts in the same commodity could indicate something
about the strength or weakness of the underlying future. Charting
the spread between two contracts helps to identify this more clearly.

HOW TO CHART THESPREAD (FIGURE 4).

1 –To bring up the chart,
right-click on any of the listed
spreads (Figure 3).